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The Oregon State University Graduate School is focusing on more student-centered programming and will host a series of open forums aimed at graduate students.

The popular comic "PhD," by Jorge Cham, has inspired a movie, which will be screened at OSU.

That series will begin this Thursday, Jan. 19, with a special free screening of the “PhD Movie,” based on a series of popular comics by Jorge Cham. The comics focus on issues in graduate education, employment and life. The screening begins at 7 p.m. in Milam Auditorium. While graduate students are the focus, the public is welcome.

The Graduate School is creating a five-year strategic plan, and administrators want to make sure that the voices of graduate students are included. Courtney Everson, Graduate Liaison for the OSU Graduate School, in collaboration with graduate leadership organizations on campus, is organizing several events to gather student input.

The second event is a series of open forums on Graduate Education at OSU. The forums are designed to gather input, ideas and concerns about graduate education at OSU from graduate students.

“We want to create more collaboration on campus,” Everson said. “It’s hard to get interdisciplinary thinking going, and we want to see more initiatives that span colleges and programs.”

Although all the forums will be open to graduate students, the final forum will be focused on the specific needs of international graduate students, who deal both with the traditional issues of graduates as well as cultural, language and other issues specific to foreign scholars.

The forums take place Jan. 31, Feb. 1, Feb. 6 and Feb. 7. Information from the forums will be complied and presented to the strategic planning committee for the Graduate School, and many of the ideas may be integrated into their final report.

The open forums are sponsored by the OSU Graduate School in collaboration with the Coalition for Graduate Employees, ASOSU, Team Liberation, and Mediators Beyond Borders. All forums will be held in Memorial Union 109. RSVP to one of the scheduled open forum event dates using this survey tool:https://surveys.bus.oregonstate.edu/main.aspx?SurveyID=4734.